


The Ocean of Flames

by siambre



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Addiction, Angst, Child Abuse, Dark, Depression, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Ozai (Avatar) is an Asshole, Pedophilia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Racism, Realistic, Slow Burn, Slow Burn Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Suicidal Thoughts, oh and eventual
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:28:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27728794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siambre/pseuds/siambre
Summary: After Aang is shot with Azula’s lightning, Katara gets captured on purpose in a desperate attempt to protect him and is taken to the Fire Nation as a prisoner.Slow burn Zutara (there's some Maiko in the beginning). Rated E for descriptions of violence, profanity, smut, and overall dark themes.
Relationships: Azula & Mai & Ty Lee, Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Mai & Zuko (Avatar), Ozai & Zuko (Avatar), minor Mai/Zuko - Relationship
Comments: 44
Kudos: 91
Collections: best zutara fics





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> !! Warning !!  
> This story tackles some serious topics such as (implied) sexual assault, suicidal thoughts, addiction, child abuse, and pedophilia. Please continue reading at your own discretion.
> 
> I do not own ATLA or any of the characters, locations, or plotlines in the show.
> 
> Beta: Ilya_Boltagon

He was falling. _Aang_ was falling.

Her friend was falling and Katara could only stand there and watch, her heart pounding in her ears, the intervals between her heartbeats getting longer and longer as one second stretched out into a million. A trail of brown smoke followed after him while sharp, blue lines of electricity were dancing around his petite body.

Without even thinking, she bent all the water around her and propelled herself toward him, gathering more water from the canal in front of her as she passed over it. She caught her friend right before he hit the ground, but the moment she touched him, all the electricity trapped inside his little body conducted through hers and the water she used, to everyone currently getting leveled by her wave. It must’ve hurt a lot, the conduction, seeing as how everyone else was on the floor twitching in pain, but she didn’t feel a thing—the pain in her heart overwhelmed all else.

Lowering herself and her friend down on the ground before the crystals he’d broken out of, she stared at the unconscious boy lying in her arms, her vision cloudy with tears.

Katara shut her eyes. This wasn’t happening. This _couldn’t_ be happening. Aang was the—he couldn’t die! He was going to end the war!

This _had_ to be a nightmare! It was a nightmare and as soon as she opened her eyes, she'd wake up and forget this ever happened.

Yeah… Just a nightmare.

She took a deep breath before hesitantly opening her eyes. But… she was still in the catacombs and Aang was still unconscious. Why hadn't she woken up already? Why wasn't she waking up? Why wasn't _he_ waking up?

“Aang,” she whimpered, her voice so weak and quiet she almost didn’t hear herself. “Aang, please wake up. Please.”

The sliver of hope in her heart that he’d open his joyful, grey eyes and tell her he was okay slowly faded away as seconds, minutes, hours passed and he kept lying still.

This couldn’t be real, could it? Would the spirits really do that to Aang?

Could he really be… dead?

Despite the smell of burnt flesh and smoke wafting from him and the lack of movement of his chest, the way he laid in her arms reminded her of the moment he’d come out of the ice all those months ago. He’d looked so much like he looked right now with his eyes closed, head lolled back, serenity cast on his features. She remembered how he’d asked her to go penguin sledding with him and how he’d laughed from start to finish. Other bittersweet memories of them together began playing before her eyes—He was on Appa's head smiling at her dreamily, they were splashing Sokka with cold water and laughing at how he growled to himself, he was blushing after she'd dressed up as a Ba Sing Se noble, she was healing a bruise he'd gotten while sparring with Toph, he was crying because everyone expected so much from him even though he was just a kid.

And her shoulders began shaking with her sobs.

He was dead.

Aang was dead.

Her best friend was _dead_.

But her weeping was cut short when a rock flew past right above her head and crashed into the wall behind her. With this sudden reminder that she wasn't alone, her brain began giving way to something other than woe and began to register her surroundings.

Although her vision was still impaired as her eyes were still misted with tears, muffled noises of combat reached her ears and she became aware of the hot air warming her face.

Katara wiped away her tears with the back of her sleeve. This was not the time to mope, not when she was still surrounded by enemies.

As her sight cleared of its fog, she spotted an old man fighting off the Dai Li in front of her. He was shouting something.

Was he shouting at her? Who was he? Why was he defending them? How long had she been kneeling here?

Her eyes darted to the people in the back, watching the whole thing go down. And that was when she saw _him,_ glancing back and forth between her, Aang, and his uncle, his eyes wide and mouth agape.

All of this was _his_ fault, yet he had the _audacity_ to look concerned?!

Then, as her gaze shifted to the girl standing beside him, staring at Aang with a smug smile, Katara’s world suddenly got engulfed in red as her mournful eyes narrowed, breathing quickened, and the sorrow in her heart turned into fury.

 _‘Azula,’_ a voice inside her head hissed. ‘ ** _She_** _killed him._ ** _She killed_** _ **Aang**.’_

Katara felt the moon’s power coursing through her veins—felt the push and pull of the water around her, the canals on her either side and the waterfall behind her—and her mouth parched with her thirst for revenge. Then, after carefully laying her friend down on the wet ground, she bolted to her feet as quick as the lightning that’d killed Aang, circled her hands above her head, and extended her right arm forward in a straight line. The scream of rage and grief that escaped her lips nearly deafened her.

Every single drop of water in the catacombs suddenly lifted up into the air, formed a huge stream of water above everyone’s head, then descended upon them at lightspeed, turning into sharp ice daggers mid-air. The skirmish before her came to an abrupt halt as everybody’s attention diverted to her first, then to the flurry of ice daggers coming at them from all sides. The earthbenders lifted up walls of earth for themselves while the firebenders created fire shields to melt the daggers.

And for a moment, the whole place went silent. Then, two Dai Li agents collapsed to the ground, clutching their necks, chests, stomachs, their pierced uniforms instantly turning brown with blood.

Katara stared at the men on the ground, lying in their own blood, gasping desperately for air. She stared at what she’d done, and her anger receded as quickly as it’d come.

Tui and La… What had she just _done._

“Go!” she heard someone yell. It was the old man in front of her. “You've got to get out of here! I'll hold them off as long as I can!”

He was right, she _did_ need to get out of here. Hooking one of Aang’s arms over her shoulders, she rushed to the waterfall and lifted herself and Aang up with her bending. Fighting ensued below and more rocks almost struck her, but she kept her gaze locked on the little flicker of light coming from the end of the tunnel leading them above.

She couldn’t think about the things she’d done right now. She couldn’t think about the fact that her friend had died and she’d become a murderer. She had to focus on the most important right now—getting herself and her friend to safety.

-o-

After what felt like decades, the end of the tunnel came into focus at last. Katara sent some of her water up to the metal bars blocking the exit, formed a bubble around them, froze the water, then closed her hand and yanked her fist, shattering the ice as well as the bars trapped inside it.

Once they'd streamed past the mouth of the tunnel and were above ground again, she laid Aang on the stone pavement and flopped down on her hands and knees next to him, panting. Her hands shook in exertion and the muscles all over her body burned. The bending she’d done to get up here, not to mention all the other things she’d been through in the past 5 minutes, had taken its toll on her.

They were on the side of a narrow road, underneath a street lantern, and the crescent moon rode high in the sky. The rotten houses around them, the smell of filth in the streets, and the drunk men in dirty, worn-out clothes wandering about left no doubt that they were in the Lower Ring.

 _‘You don’t have time to rest, Katara,’_ the voice from before spoke up. _‘The Dai Li are on your tail. Get out of here!’_

Right.

She hastily picked up Aang, froze her remaining water into an ice slide, and began riding the slide at full speed, making sure to make sharp turns and never sliding down a single road for too long. 

With all the bending she’d been doing, her head was starting to clear up. The most urgent thing right now was healing Aang. He was the Avatar, he was far too important to die. And she didn’t want to lose her best friend.

_‘You can’t heal a dead person, Katara.’_

No. She refused to think of Aang as dead. He was only… _temporarily_ gone. She could still bring him back. She still had the spirit water Pakku had given her. He’d said it had unique abilities, so it _could_ work.

In order for her to heal Aang, though, she first needed to find a place where no one would disturb them. There, she’d bring him back and they’d figure out a way to get out of this city together.

Her plan was far from ideal, but it was better than nothing.

Going as fast as she was, it was difficult for her to look for a good hideout. She slowed down a bit and began scanning her surroundings.

A small house ahead drew her attention. It had no lights coming from under its door. Even if anyone was inside, Katara would just freeze them to the wall and proceed with her plan. The only thing that mattered now was Aang, and she’d do _anything_ to protect him. She’d already _killed_ for him, hadn’t she. What was freezing someone to a wall compared to _murdering_ them.

‘ _Come on, Katara, you’ve got more important things to think about. Focus._ ’

She agreed with the voice this time.

Coming to a halt before the door of the tiny building, the waterbender melted the ice slide and burst open the door with the water. It was a one-room house with five sleeping mats on the floor, a small chest to the right, and some firewood next to the wooden window to the left. To her delight, there was no one inside.

Katara quickly carried Aang inside, laid him face-down on one of the mats. She shut the door behind them and froze the water on the floor against it, creating a sturdy barricade behind it. Then, she went back to her friend, knelt beside him, took out the vial containing the spirit water from its place around her neck, and bent the liquid outside, spinning it in circles above her palm.

The water began glowing and illuminated the dark room, finally allowing the waterbender to see the horror plastered on her friend’s back—a red, star-shaped scar that would forever be ingrained into his back. It looked like someone had carved his flesh out with a burning knife.

Katara had never worked with an injury this bad before. Could she _really_ heal him?

Yes, she could. She was going to heal him and he was going to wake up.

He was going to be okay.

Placing the water above her palm against the scar, she prayed, “Please work. Tui and La, please wake him up. Please bring him back to me.”

When the glowing water disappeared into the scar, she gathered more water from the ice barricade, gloved it around her hands, and moved them back and forth above his back.

Looking down at her friend’s horrible scar, everything came crashing down on her and tears started pouring from her eyes like rain in a raging storm. It wasn’t that prince or his sister’s fault Aang was in this condition—it was hers. _They_ hadn’t done this to him, _she_ had. If she hadn’t trusted that prick of a prince, she wouldn’t have been so distraught during the fight. And if she hadn’t been so distraught during the fight, she could’ve ended Azula right where she stood. She could’ve prevented all of this. Aang could’ve defeated everyone there and they could’ve been on their way out of the city by now!

But _no.._. She _had_ to trust the prince… Why couldn’t she have bonded over dead mothers with someone else! She’d even offered to waste the spirit water on him! How could she be so stupid! How could she forget that he literally chased them from the South Pole to the North! How could she do this to Aang!

 _Everything_ that had happened tonight was her fault and she would _never_ forgive herself for it…

-o-

Katara could literally feel her energy draining. That was the bad thing about healing, it required the healer to transfer their own energy to the patient. Normally, all it’d cause was a weird feeling in her bones, and a mild headache at worst. But she'd been trying to bring Aang back for the past… 20—30?—minutes now and sobbing throughout it had weakened her already exhausted body.

First, her legs had become numb, so she’d pulled herself a mat and switched to sitting cross-legged on it. Next, standing straight had begun straining her back, so she’d slouched. Then, her arms had become too heavy to lift, so she’d stopped moving them and set them down on the scar and continued healing her friend like that. And now, a throb behind her temples was threatening to make her head explode. This, Katara didn’t have a remedy for.

She wasn’t sure how long she could go on like this. It was getting harder just to keep her eyes open. Of course, she wouldn’t stop healing Aang just because she was tired—he needed her help and she never, _ever_ turned her back to people who needed her. Never.

_‘Alright, Katara, enough complaining. You have to get out of this place. Think. What are your options?’_

Well, they’d entered the city by train, hadn’t they? If any were going out the Inner Wall at this hour, she could—

 _‘Are you crazy? The Dai Li_ _are after you. You can’t use public transportation!’_

So, what? What was she going to do? Earthbend the walls down?

_‘Think of another way.’_

There _was_ no other way. You either earthbent yourself out or used the trains. Without them, there was no exit from this spirits forsaken place. Oh, how she wished Toph was here right now. It would’ve taken her approximately one second to get them out of here. She wished Sokka was here too, he would’ve known what to do.

_‘Stop thinking about them, Katara—you’ll get yourself killed doing that. Come on, you don’t have time.’_

Okay okay okay… Hmm… What would Sokka do? He’d say something like, “If you can’t go through a wall, then you go _around_ it,” and then praise himself for being a genius the rest of the day.

_‘No use—both the Inner Wall and the Outer Wall are circular. You can’t go around them. You can only go through, under, or over them. But maybe you can—’_

Katara’s eyes widened. She could go _over_ them.

Aang had told her just before the fight that he’d picked up Sokka and Toph on his way here. They were in Ba Sing Se! They were here! She only needed to call Appa to where she and Aang were, and they’d come here and rescue them!

Her tears stopped instantly and her heart filled with hope. Maybe, despite all the odds, they still had a chance to get out of this place.

While keeping healing Aang with one hand, the waterbender searched his pockets, pulled out Appa’s whistle, and then blew the whistle as hard as her lungs would allow her.

A bizarre tug in her blood, however, took her out of the small moment she’d been having. It was the same tug she’d get while she was approaching a large body of water, only this time, the body of water was approaching _her_. Katara highly doubted a moving lake would suddenly appear in the middle of a city. No, this tug could only mean the number of people outside was increasing. There was no reason for such an increase at this hour of the night.

It was the Dai Li. They were combing through the streets, searching for them.

Katara had to get out of there. Now.

She stopped healing Aang and tried to rise from her place, but her legs gave out from under her and she fell onto her mat. She cursed under her breath, then got up and wobbled over to the closed wooden window. She opened it and looked at the sky. There was no sign of Appa.

Damn it! She couldn’t escape on her own! Escaping on an ice slide would mean she’d have to use the streets because she’d need a flat surface to ride on. But if she did that, the Dai Li would spot them so easily she might as well light herself on fire and shout that the Avatar was with her. Without her ice slide, however, she simply couldn’t carry Aang _and_ run simultaneously.

This left Katara with only two choices—She could either flee with Aang and face the enemy head-on or leave him behind and save her own life. The **latter** option she wouldn’t even take into consideration. If she fought the Dai Li, though, she’d lose and they’d kill Aang… for real this time.

So, she couldn’t leave him behind, but she also couldn’t take him with her?

Wait. What if… What if she _did_ get caught, but Aang wasn’t _with_ her when that happened? If she was caught on the opposite side of the city, she'd be drawing the Dai Li's attention to herself— _away_ from Aang. And while they were preoccupied with questioning her, Sokka and Toph would swoop in and rescue Aang from here.

This way he'd be safe.

This was the _only_ way he'd be safe.

And if it meant that she’d have to go to prison for the rest of her life for him to be safe, so be it—it was a sacrifice she was willing to make. Her mother hadn’t thought twice about sacrificing herself to save Katara, neither would she. She had to do this for her best friend, for the last hope for peace this world had left.

So it was decided, then—She’d leave Aang here, get as far away from him as possible, then get caught. Yeah… This was the new plan.

She went back to her friend and knelt beside him. She gently brushed his forehead with her fingers, his skin cold and pale under her touch.

“I won’t let them get you, Aang,” she promised him, “I won’t let them hurt you again.”

Katara blew the whistle in her hand once more before placing it in his palm and closing his fingers over it with her own. She placed a soft kiss on his fingers and then another one on the arrow on his head. “Don’t worry about me, Aang… and tell Sokka I love him, okay?”

She pulled her best friend into a bone-crushing hug. Her tears soaked his ruined orange shirt.

_‘You don’t have time for this, Katara. You have to get out of here.’_

She grudgingly laid her friend back on the mat, leaving a piece of her heart with him. Wiping her tears with the back of her sleeve, she got up to walk over to the small chest on her right.

She shuffled through the clothes inside and took out a black shirt. Although it was too big for her, it’d make it easier for her to conceal herself in the darkness of the night. When she put the shirt on, it reached almost all the way down to her knees. It was long enough to cover most of her blue robes but short enough to not get in her way while she ran. She then took out two sashes. With one, she tied the large shirt around her waist, and with the other, she tied her hair in a low ponytail.

She was ready.

Katara went to the window once again and glanced back at her friend one last time. This might very well have been the last time she’d ever see him again. This house might very well have been his grave.

No. Aang was going to be okay. Sokka and Toph were going to save him. He was going to live. He was going to be okay.

She turned to the window, shut her eyes, and took a deep breath.

He was going to be okay.

When she opened her eyes again, the determination in them was as clear as day.

_He was going to be okay._

With that, she jumped out the window, melted some of the ice behind the door, and made a new barricade behind the window before closing it from the outside. It was now impossible for a non-bender to go inside. Against earthbenders, however, there was nothing else she could do.

Now, all she could do for Aang was run away from him.

-o-

When Katara jumped from one roof to another, nobody saw anything. When she came across a building taller than the one she was on, nobody noticed a girl scaling up the side of a building. And if she made a sound, she was long gone by the time anyone could check out what it was.

She’d been running for hundreds of paces now and she knew that it wouldn’t be long before her legs gave out from under her. She had to rest.

Jumping from the roof she was on to another, she finally came to a stop on a two-story building’s roof located on a corner of an intersection. She fell to her knees and put her hands on the cool surface of the roof tiles, panting, and examined the streets below in the meantime.

The intersection wasn’t big, but the buildings to the front and right of her were still too far away for her to jump to, and she didn’t want to risk turning left—she had to keep going straight, she had to get away from Aang. Up until now, she’d managed to avoid crossing roads. Now, it seemed she had no other choice.

The building to her left had one less story than the one she was on. She could jump onto it, climb down, walk across the street, then climb one of the buildings on the other side and continue on from there.

Katara nodded to herself, that sounded like a solid plan. 

As she stood up, the muscles in her legs and abdomen pleaded with her to stop, but she didn’t listen to them. She ran and jumped onto the other building, grabbed the edges of the roof, and dangled in the air before dropping onto the dark alley between the two buildings.

A group of four drunk men walking with their drinks in their hands, singing out-of-tune and leaning on each other for support broke the quiet of the road ahead. But other than them, it was completely empty.

Katara waited for the group to pass, then crossed the street with quick steps and entered another dark alley.

Her eyes scanned the place. There was a big dumpster next to one of the buildings. Its eaves looked climbable enough. She could get on the dumpster and climb the rest of the way and resume running.

Suddenly, two hand-shaped rocks materialized from the shadows of the left building, advancing at her at breakneck speed. Katara gasped and lept to the side just in time to avoid her head getting bashed in. A Dai Li agent dropped down in front of her from the same place the rocks had come.

She immediately got into a defensive stance and the agent did the same. The two eyed each other, the tension between them almost tangible. Then, Katara circled her right arm above her head, drawing water from the humid air above her, froze it into small ice daggers, and sent them flying toward the agent. Her goal wasn’t to actually kill the man—she’d never do that again—but distract him long enough to escape.

Once the daggers gained enough momentum of their own, she spun around and sprinted back the way she came. Unfortunately for her, being as exhausted as she was, she could only run at a fraction of her usual speed. She peeked behind over her shoulder to see the agent running after her.

The agent stopped abruptly and punched his fists upward, and Katara heard the sound of earth moving in front of her. When she whipped her head around to look, she saw that a huge wall of earth had emerged out of the ground and blocked the entire street. Her eyes widened and her breath got caught in her throat as she tried to stop, but she tripped over her own feet instead and toppled over onto the ground, scraping her palms and knees in the process.

She tried to get up and run away, but the stones of the pavement beneath her wrapped around her hands and feet, binding her to the ground.

The agent walked up to her and looming over her, his hands behind his back, chin lifted high.

“Where is the Avatar?” he asked, his voice as cold as his eyes.

Katara glared at the man, then spit on his shoes with all the energy she had left in her body. “Fuck you.”

Then, before she could even blink, the man’s fist collided with her temple and her world went dark.

-o-

In a dimly lit room of an almost empty house in the Lower Ring of Ba Sing Se, silence reigned but for the steady drip of melting ice in the doorway and window, and the faint, barely audible rasp of a weak breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, everyone! I’d like to thank each and every one of you for giving my story a chance. This is my first ever fanfic, so I *am* a bit nervous, but I’m mostly excited to share with you all the things I’ve planned for the future.
> 
> As I’m sure you could tell from the warning I put at the beginning and the contents of this chapter, this story will be a little darker than the show. You can expect to see a lot of delving into some characters’ psychologies and the darkest corners of their minds in the future.
> 
> If you have any constructive criticisms, suggestions, or just wanna chat, feel free to leave a comment.
> 
> PS: English isn’t my native language, so I apologize now if there are any errors in my writing, be it vocabulary, grammar, or anything else. Also, my vocabulary might be a mix of British and American English since I learned British English in school, but am used to speaking American English in my daily life. If there are any errors you see, please let me know.


	2. Chapter 2

“We’ve done it, Zuko,” the Fire Princess tore through the silence growing in the throne room. “It’s taken a hundred years, but the Fire Nation has conquered Ba Sing Se.”

Zuko, standing by her side, lowered his head in shame. “I betrayed Uncle.”

“No, _he_ betrayed _you_. Zuko,” Azula stood up from her seat on the Earth King’s throne, “when you return home, Father will welcome you as a war hero.”

“But I don’t have the Avatar. What if Father doesn’t restore my honor?”

“He doesn’t need to, Zuko,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Today, you restored your _own_ honor.”

He had? But… he didn’t feel any more honored than before—he only felt a 10-ton komodo rhino sitting on his conscience. Was he supposed to feel this way? Maybe this was what having honor was like and he’d just forgotten after so many years of dishonor… 

If he truly did have his honor back, did that mean Father would accept him back? Would he love him now that he was more than just a stain on the family’s reputation? Or would he be disappointed in him for not being strong enough to capture the Avatar despite having so many chances to do so? Would he be angry at him for becoming a fugitive and living like a peasant? Would he burn him again? Or would he get rid of him permanently this time?

Zuko didn't know.

What he did know was that he’d fucked up. Big time.

He'd betrayed Uncle. He’d betrayed the man whose shoulders he’d wept after his late mother. The man whose hand he held as he screamed in agony after the Agni Kai with his father. The man who had patiently endured all the insults Zuko had thrown at him. The man who had bought him new clothes with their only money and spent ten minutes doing his hair for some date. The man who had taken care of him when he’d gotten sick. The man who had loved him like his own son.

He’d betrayed the man that'd had to survive _three weeks_ with no food or water on a piece of driftwood at his old age because of him. The man that'd had to become a fugitive from the nation he was supposed to be ruling because of him. The man that'd had to live in caves and travel across the entire Earth Kingdom on foot because of him. The man that'd had to beg for money on the streets because of him.

And now, that man was in jail, and it was Zuko who had put him there.

The sounds of approaching footsteps took the Fire Prince out of his brooding. He looked up to see the Head of Dai Li entering the throne room from the gigantic doors to the right. The man walked to the front of the stairs of the throne and got down on one knee before the royal siblings.

“What is it?” Azula asked, removing her hand from her brother’s shoulder and turning to the agent. 

“We’ve apprehended the waterbender, Princess.”

The corner of her lips lifted. “And the Avatar?”

“He wasn’t with her, ma’am. She's being interrogated as we speak. She says he's dead, but won’t tell where the body is.”

Azula briefly glanced to the side, thinking. “She's trying to give us the slip. Continue searching the entirety of the Lower Ring. And keep interrogating her—she'll break eventually.”

“As you wish, Princess,” said the man, then got up and went back the way he came, leaving the siblings alone once more.

Amongst all the things going on with his uncle, Zuko had completely forgotten about the Water Tribe girl. Now that he’d remembered, however, the way she’d looked at him with such tenderness and concern as her gentle fingertips brushed his scar, he wished she’d remained forgotten—his heart already ached for Uncle, he couldn’t bear to think about another person he’d betrayed tonight.

Azula sat back down on the throne, back straight, fists on the armrests, gaze fixed ahead. 

“I hear that peasant is a pretty important hero for the enemy,” she said. “Did you know she’s the daughter of the Chief of the Southern Water Tribe and that she used to be the waterbending master of the Avatar?”

…Okay? She was a prisoner now, whoever she used to be didn’t matter anymore.

“Good for her,” Zuko responded flatly.

“It is good for her,” his sister said, a note of malice present in her voice. “But it doesn’t have to be good _only_ for her, does it?”

Oh no. Zuko had heard that tone countless times in his childhood. And every single one of those times had ended with something terrible happening either to him or someone else. 

He turned to her fully, a feeling of dread creeping up from the pit of his stomach. “What're you saying, Azula?”

“Soon, the whole world will know that Ba Sing Se fell to the Fire Nation, brother," Azula started, still gazing into the depths of the throne room, a small smile beginning to materialize on her lips. "And even better, their precious, little Avatar was killed. The enemy's safe haven and biggest hope, defeated on the same night… It’ll devastate them.” She leaned back on the throne, crossing her legs. “But, it won’t be enough to break them—they’ll just regroup and continue their rebellions elsewhere. If we want to really break them, end them for good, we need to crush any sense of morale they have left.

"And you know what _could_ do that?" She finally turned to him, her smile blossoming into a full-on smirk, the brown of her eyes having been taken over by the black of her pupils. "Hearing that one of their biggest heroes became a whore in the Fire Lord’s harem.”

The blood flowing in Zuko's veins froze.

No. Oh, Agni no… The harem was… No one, no matter how grave their crime, deserved to be punished like that, least of all the waterbender. She... wasn’t a bad person. She’d offered to _help_ him—her mortal enemy. She'd done that twice, in fact—First when Azula had shot Uncle, then tonight in the catacombs. Zuko may not have known much about her, but he knew that she was compassionate. And it was her compassion that had landed her in this situation in the first place—she was only trying to protect her friend. If someone were to hurt Uncle, Zuko would’ve done the same!

It wasn’t fair. She didn’t deserve this.

“What’s more,” Azula continued, too caught up in her own world to notice the color drain from her brother’s face, “since the peasant is a chief’s daughter, the soldiers in her tribe may even attempt to rescue her without waiting for the eclipse.” She chuckled and her gaze shifted back ahead. “Oh, it’s _perfect_.”

Zuko stared at his sister in disbelief. She was enjoying this. She was enjoying sentencing an innocent girl to a life of slavery.

He wanted to lash out at her, wanted to tell her she was crazy, that the waterbender didn’t deserve this, that she was a good person, but he knew better than losing his temper in Azula’s presence—he knew he couldn’t afford the consequences otherwise.

So, instead, he kept his cool and recovered from his stunned state as best he could.

What he needed to do right now was changing her mind before it was too late, not lecturing her on ethics and morality.

He wracked his brain for a good enough reason to get the waterbender out of his sister's grasp.

“I say we use her as a bargaining tool to release prisoners of war,” he suggested, keeping his tone casual. “As you said, she’s _very_ important to the enemy. We can get thousands of our soldiers back—soldiers we’ll need to enforce our rule here in Ba Sing Se.”

At her brother’s voice, Azula snapped out of her thoughts and shrugged. “After tonight, the enemy will be in shambles anyway—we’ll use the eastern units for the occupation, and after things calm down here, we can just go get the soldiers back ourselves. We don’t need the peasant.”

“But… if we move the eastern units, we’ll leave a bunch of territory defenseless. What if someone tries to get those lands while all of our soldiers are here?”

Azula rolled her eyes. “We’ll move the western units there, Dum-Dum.”

“But... then the homeland will be left open for attack.”

She sighed. “We had an incredible victory here tonight, Zuko. People will line up to enlist in the army—they’ll wanna be a part of history. The homeland will be safe.”

Shit. That was a good point.

“She’s a Water Tribe peasant, Azula,” he said softly. “Father won’t see her as anything more than a filthy savage. He’ll never bed her and he knows no noble would want her as a gift. She’ll stay as a slave for the rest of her life.”

The princess slowly turned her head to look at her brother, her smirk now replaced by a dangerous glare. “Why does it matter to _you_ if she’s a slave or not, Zuko?”

His eyes widened. She was right, he _shouldn’t_ have cared whatever happened to the girl—they were enemies, after all, not friends.

“It doesn’t. I just…” He crossed his arms. “We already have enough servants in the palace—we don’t need one more mouth to feed. And I doubt she even knows how to hold a mop.”

“Is that so?” Azula queried, spearing him with her eyes.

Zuko turned away. “Yes.”

“Hmm…” Her glare softened and she tilted her head slightly. “In that case, why don’t _you_ deliver her the good news, Zuzu? She’d appreciate learning her fate from a familiar face rather than a stranger’s, wouldn’t you agree?”

What?! He couldn’t tell someone they were going to become a slave! He couldn’t even _look_ at the girl after stabbing her in the back, let alone tell her something like this!

_‘Calm down, Zuko. Don’t do anything stupid. You’re tired, go to your room.’_

Deciding the voice inside his mind was right, Zuko huffed and began walking toward the stairs. “I’m not your servant, Azula. Go have one of your little agents do your legwork.”

But as he was about to take his first step down the stairs, Azula’s sardonic laughter echoed in the enormous room. “Oh, Zuzu, don’t tell me… Are you _afraid_ of the peasant?”

The Fire Prince stopped dead in his tracks, his foot hovering above a marble stair.

Afraid of her? _AFRAID_ OF HER?! HE WASN’T— WHY WOULD HE BE— HE WASN’T AFRAID OF HER! He was the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation! A son of Agni himself! He wasn’t afraid of anyone!

“It’s okay, Zuzu. I’m sure Dad won’t mind hearing you’re still the coward you’ve always been.”

Zuko felt his cheeks burn, though he wasn’t sure if it was of anger or embarrassment. He whipped around to his sister, his fists smoldering at his sides. She was examining her nails, her previous smirk back on her lips.

“I’M NOT AFRAID OF HER, AZULA! AND I’M _NOT_ A COWARD!”

The Princess glanced up from her hand. “Why don't you prove it, then.”

“FINE!”

“Good.” She uncrossed her legs and held her hand in the direction of the doors to her right. “The Dai Li will show you the way. And tell the peasant I say hi.”

Zuko practically flew down the stairs and stomped over to the doors.

Afraid... Ha! He wasn’t afraid! He was going to show Azula who was afraid! He wasn’t scared of that Water Tribe girl! He could face her!

What was there to be scared of, anyway! All he had to do was look her in the eye and tell her that she was going to become a slave for the family responsible for her mother and friend’s deaths, and be forced to clean toilets and scrub the floors and get treated like a rat for the rest of her life...

He could do that… Right?

-o-

Zuko wanted to kick himself.

He’d let Azula play him like a damn fiddle. She’d set a trap and he hadn’t just fallen for it—no, that would’ve been way too smart of him—he’d _dived_ into it headfirst! So much for not doing anything stupid! And the worst part about this was he _knew_ something like this would’ve happened—something like this _always_ happened.

What was he even going to say to the girl? What, was he going to go up to her and say, “Hey, remember me? I’m that guy that stabbed you in the back and helped kill your best friend! I know I’m the last person on the planet you wanna see right now, but surprise surprise, you’re about to become a slave! Congra-fucking-tulations!”

Ugh. Now he wanted to hit his head to a wall. Repeatedly. No, he wanted the earth to swallow him whole.

Seriously though, what was he going to say? How did one tell someone something like this? Say, by some miracle, he did manage to tell her, how was she going to react to this _great_ news? Was she going to spit on his face and curse his entire bloodline? Attack him? Well, he wouldn't blame her for doing so. But what if she started crying, though? Verbal and physical attacks he could take all day, but if she were to cry… He’d seen the way she’d sobbed holding her dead friend in her arms—he couldn’t watch her suffer like that again. He simply couldn’t. 

He let out a sigh. Why couldn’t he have just stayed quiet? He should’ve known there was no way Azula would’ve let… _her_ go without a— Agni, the girl had offered to heal his scar, but he couldn’t even remember her name?! He’d heard her brother say it before… There was a ‘k’ and an ‘r’ and a ‘t’, and a bunch of ‘a’s scattered in there. So, what was it? Arkata? Takara?

A man’s voice coming from in front of him cut through his thoughts like a knife.

“State your business,” it said.

Oh, Zuko must’ve arrived at the prison… Great.

Since leaving the throne room, he’d been blindly following a Dai Li agent around the palace. Now that his focus was back on, though, he realized he was walking in a tunnel—the ceiling above, a couple of heads taller than him, and the walls barely two shoulders apart. The old, moss-covered stones of the tunnel hardly reflected the light coming from the glowing green crystals mounted on the walls, and side passages branched off to the left and right, all of them as dim and eerie as the one he was in.

The agent in front of him was walking, his hands clasped behind his back, and some steps ahead of him, a metal door and another agent standing guard in front of the door marked the end of the tunnel.

The agent leading the way stopped before the guard, causing Zuko to do the same.

“Prince Zuko will see the waterbender,” he said.

The guard replied without even peeking at Zuko. “She’s being interrogated. Come back later.” 

“He’s here on Princess Azula’s request,” the agent emphasized. And at those words, the guard's attention finally shifted at the Prince. He eyed him briefly before turning around to unlock the door and stepping out of the way.

Zuko let out a shaky breath as he stepped into the prison. In a few moments, he’d be face to face with the girl. He decided the best course of action would be to tell her of her fate as quickly as possible—if she got angry, he’d let her take her frustration out on him, but if she showed any signs of crying, he’d be _out_ of there.

Inside the short, narrow passage that was this prison, the floors, walls, doors, ceiling, and even the little boxes on the floor with the glowing crystals in them, were made of metal. And as the Fire Prince and the agent strode through, their footfalls tore through its deafening silence. Four intimidating doors stood closed on either side of the path, all identical with their square, barred windows and rectangular openings on the bottom for food trays. The fifth one at the opposite end, however, differed from the others as it didn’t have a window or an opening.

The agent led the Fire Prince to the windowless door and knocked on it twice. “The prisoner has a visitor.”

A deep, muffled voice came from the other side of the door. “She’s in an interrogation.”

“Princess’s orders.”

No response came for a few seconds, but then, the door creaked open, revealing a huge man standing in the doorway. A rush of hot air emanating behind the man hit the Prince in the face and a horrid, metallic smell reached his nose.

Zuko knew that smell well. It was the smell of blood. And judging by its intensity, there was _a lot_ of it.

The man standing in the doorway wore a black outfit, covering him from head-to-toe, and a black mask and a hood left only his cruel eyes visible to the outside world. His large frame obscured most of what was inside the room, but Zuko was able to make out the top of the waterbender’s hung head from under the man’s arm.

Cold sweat began trickling down his back as the dread he’d felt earlier in the throne room returned.

This couldn't be good.

The agent moved aside as the man in black took a step toward the Prince, towering above the tiny boy only coming up to his shoulders. He carried around him an aura of ominousness and his eyes lacked any life in them.

“Make it quick,” he said firmly, then stepped out of the way, giving the young prince a full view of the girl sitting behind him.

And the icy terror brewing in Zuko’s stomach exploded, paralyzing him to his spot.

She was seated in the middle of the room on a tall metal chair, secured in place with leather straps around her shins, wrists, and chest as blood dripped from her mouth and the tip of her nose onto her black shirt. But those didn't even compare to three thin pieces of metal sticking out from under her fingernails—causing even more blood to trickle down the arm and leg of the chair and pool beside her foot. Her eyes were closed and she was as quiet as a ghost—the only evidence she was even alive, the faint rise and fall of her chest.

Zuko’s heart stopped beating for a moment as breathing suddenly became too difficult of a feat, and his vision blurred.

“Prince Zuko,” the agent’s voice came from hundreds of miles away, “are you alright?”

'I’m fine,' he wanted to say, but his mouth wouldn’t form the words no matter how hard he tried. Instead, he nodded while the world around him started spinning.

The man in black chuckled. “Prince of the Fire Nation my ass. Look at him. He’s gonna faint like a little girl.” He leaned back against the wall next to the door and crossed his arms. “Hey. Little girl,” he called the Prince. “If you’re just gonna stand there like that all night, I’m going back in. I don’t have time for your shit.”

Ignoring the man’s insults, Zuko swallowed the lump in his throat and ordered his feet to take a step forward. He fixed his gaze on the floor, avoiding the girl sitting before him. His legs begged him to stop, to turn back and run, but he pushed through. And once his foot landed on the floor, he forced another step, then another one, and then another one until he was inside the room, and the door closed behind him.

They were alone now, the girl and him, but he still couldn’t bring himself to look at her. How _could_ he look at her when it was _his_ fault she was here?

A ghastly atmosphere reigned over the small room as the fireplace on the left burned with green fire, heating up the room to a blistering degree, its crackling filling the quiet air. There was a metal table on the right with more long needles, a pair of pliers, and a bloodied brass knuckle lying on top of it, and the walls, as well as the ceiling and the back of the door, were lined with puffy, black leathers—Noise insulators, Zuko realized with dread.

He had to help her—he couldn’t just stand by and do nothing while the poor girl died a slow and excruciating death.

Wounds. He had to tend to her wounds. Even in a sanitized infirmary, it wasn’t uncommon for wounds to get infected, whereas this girl was going to be thrown into a prison cell without a single care for her health or hygiene.

_‘And how are you planning to do that? It’s not like there are any first-aid supplies lying around.’_

Well, he’d seen the physician on his ship burn the arm of a soldier to close and disinfect a wound once—he could do the same with her. It’d be agonizing, but it was the only way to ensure a nasty infection wouldn’t kill her.

_‘The wounds on her hands you can burn, but what about the ones on her face?’_

No, he had to figure out another way.

_‘Come on, Zuko, think! Every second you waste here standing like an idiot, that girl is in more pain! Think, think, think!’_

Um… In the crystal catacombs, she’d said she had healing abilities and taken out a vial of water. Did that mean she could somehow waterbend-heal people? Would it work on herself too? Would it help with her pain?

There was only one way to find out.

Without looking anywhere near her hands, he walked over to the unconscious girl, gently lifted her head up with his thumb and bent pointer finger under her chin, her dark skin almost as pale as his own, and let it lean back on the headrest.

Her whole face was coated in red. Blood trailed down her left eyebrow, flowed from the large cuts on both of her cheeks, gushed from her broken nose, and poured from her split lip. Her left eye was swollen shut, beads of sweat plastered the rogue strands of her tied back hair onto her temples, and two channels of dried tears ran across the blood on her cheeks.

Zuko had to look away and take a few deep breaths in order to keep the contents of his stomach down.

Once he was feeling less nauseous, he knelt down on the floor in front of the girl, not caring that the small pond of her blood was staining his robes, and looked up at her.

“Can you hear me?” he asked her quietly, his voice low as to not to be heard from the outside.

The only response he got was the crackling of the fireplace.

“Hey,” he lightly shook the girl by the shoulders, “I’m not here to hurt you. Tell me how your healing abilities work so I can help you.”

No answer again.

Zuko heaved a sigh. He was on his own.

Okay… So, first, he needed to figure out how this waterbending-healing thing even worked. Did a waterbender have to actively do the healing, or was it enough to just bring the injury in contact with water? Also, did it require that specific 'spirit water' she'd told him about, or would any type of water do the job? Because if an unconscious waterbender and any sort of water could carry out the healing, Zuko might’ve actually had a chance to help her. He may not have been able to bend water to his will like her, but he could still pour it on her hands, couldn’t he?

Whether this would work or not, he had no idea, but he had to give it a shot nonetheless.

Getting up and going back to the door, Zuko donned his most princely demeanor and opened it. The moment he opened the door, the cooler air outside sent chills down his body.

The agent that'd brought him here and the man in black were standing a couple of steps out in the passage, both with their hands behind their backs. They went quiet as soon as the Fire Prince appeared in the doorway, his back straight, shoulders pushed back, chin lifted.

“Go fetch me some water,” Zuko ordered the agent with such authority, it would’ve made even his father proud.

The agent blinked in confusion at the odd request.

“You do realize she’s a master waterbender, right?” the man in black asked, turning to him.

“Do you think she’s in any condition to fight right now?” he said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. But when neither man stirred, he added, “Besides, what better way to ‘interrogate’ a waterbender than tormenting her with water she can’t bend?”

At that, the men glanced at each other before the agent nodded to him and went out to the open door of the prison. After a minute of tense silence between the man in black and the Prince, the agent came back carrying a metal bucket in his hand.

Zuko took the bucket, shut the door behind him, and placed it on the table beside the girl. Then, he took a deep breath to gather the courage to finally look at her hands.

Her fingers were sprawled palm-down on the long, wide armrests while bruises had begun forming along the tight bonds around her wrists. Her right hand was swollen, the bones inside it clearly broken. The three needles in that hand had ripped off her nails completely and, through the thin layer of raw skin and blood where the nails used to be, Zuko could see the silver lines of the needles tearing further into her fingers, almost all the way to the first joints.

Zuko's head began spinning again and he held on to the table’s edge for dear life as an acidic bile rose in his throat.

_‘It’s okay, Zuko. You’re okay. Just close your eyes and breathe. In… Out… In… Out… See? You’re already better. Now do what you need to do.’_

Right. Wiping the sweat on his hands on his outer robe, he took a deep breath, bracing himself for the anguished screams and the gush of yet more blood to come. He reached for the needles to pull them out, but jerked his hands back with a gasp when the metals seared his fingertips with a sharp, hot sting the moment he touched them.

The scar on his left eye ached at the familiar sensation on his skin and the memory of the bright orange flame above his father's fist coming for his face suddenly filled his vision. 

For Agni's sake… Zuko knew how indescribably agonizing it was to be burned, and he could imagine how much misery this girl was in right now—and his scar was only external too, whereas this girl was being burned _from the inside._ Hadn’t she been through enough already? Not to mention all the horrible things that would happen to her once she’d got to the harem… 

Luckily for her, at least, the boy standing before her was a firebender—a firebender trained by the Dragon of the West himself.

Without hesitation, Zuko set his right palm down onto all three needles at the same time, transferred his weight from his right foot to the left, pointed two fingers toward the fireplace, and let the energy flow through him—through his right hand, up his arm, down to his stomach, and then out from his pointed fingers, just like Uncle had taught him to do when redirecting lightning. He hissed through gritted teeth and squeezed his watering eyes shut as the top layers of his skin started melting off where the metals laid beneath his palm, and the smell of burnt flesh joined the smell of blood in the air. 

Soon enough, hot air began streaming from his fingertips toward the fireplace and the metals beneath his hand gradually cooled down, though he couldn’t really feel them anymore—the nerve ends in contact with the metals had completely burned off.

As soon as the stream disappeared, Zuko dipped his shaking hand in the bucket of water on the table and groaned brutally in pain when it sizzled at the contact with the cold water. Then, when he felt a little better and his ragged breaths evened out, he took his hand out of the water to see three horizontal, scaling red lines ranging from one end of his palm to the other.

But this wasn’t the time to suffer right now—he still had to heal the girl before the men outside got suspicious of how long he was staying here.

Wrapping his fingers around two of the needles, Zuko took another deep breath and readied himself for the horrifying screams to come.

And then, he yanked the needles out.

-o-

She wasn’t screaming. She wasn’t screaming or crying or shaking or reacting in any way while blood flowed like a river from her fingertips. She simply kept sitting there as if nothing had happened, as if someone hadn’t just pulled two needles out of her fingers.

Zuko knew she was unconscious, but damn… she was _out_ out.

Maybe this was for the better, though. At least now she didn’t have to suffer. Well, she _was_ going to suffer when she eventually woke up, but with the healing he’d be doing, the pain wouldn't be as bad as it normally would have been… hopefully.

He threw the needles in his hands to the floor, then grabbed the last one still inside her finger and pulled that one out too. Then, without missing a beat, he picked up the bucket on the table, poured some water on her hand, then placed the bucket down on the floor and circled his hands around hers to keep the water in. The blood on her hand instantly drowned the clear water in crimson.

When nothing happened for a few moments, he began doubting himself, but an ethereal sound coming from inside his hands silenced his worries and the water started glowing a light shade of blue.

 _‘It worked!’_ Zuko sighed a breath of relief. _‘Oh thank Agni, it worked… She’s gonna be okay!’_

It felt like it took years for the light and the sound to fade away, while in reality barely half a minute had passed. Once the healing was finally done, though, he saw, through the washed away blood, that her hand had shrunk back to its original size, the bleeding had stopped, and the raw skin of her nailbeds now more or less matched the complexion of the rest of her fingers.

The tiniest of smiles found its way onto his lips.

Encouraged by his small victory, Zuko picked up the bucket again, poured more water down her face, and cupped his hands under her bleeding eyebrow. This time, the healing took less time to finish. Then, he repeated the same procedure on her swollen eye, bleeding cheeks, and nose—of course, being careful to let her breathe. The healing on her face didn’t work as well as it had on her hand since it was more difficult to hold the water in now, but her eyebrow and nose stopped bleeding, the swell of her eye shrunk somewhat, and the cuts on her cheek mostly closed into thin lines of scars.

While he was working on her split lips, a knock came from the door behind.

“Hurry up, kid. I don’t have all night.”

Oh, how Zuko wanted to burn that man to a crisp right about now. Rather than responding to the man in a very unprincelike manner, though, he kept healing the girl’s lips until the last of the glowing dwindled away and the split turned into a small cut.

Now that he was done with her face, he took a step back from her. She seemed more relaxed and her breathing had become more prominent. He looked down at the bucket beside her feet. He still had some water left. If she had more wounds, he could heal them as well while he was at it.

So, his eyes began scanning down her body. And it was then when a bloodstained, blue ribbon around her neck caught his attention. He recognized it instantly—he’d had it for a whole month, after all. 

The taste of happiness he’d gotten soured in his mouth and his smile fell.

It was her mother’s necklace—she’d said so herself when he’d tied her to a tree that one night—and this may have been the only thing she had left of her. But she was a prisoner now—all of her possessions were going to be taken away and destroyed, the necklace included. And even worse, if the Dai Li ever found out its significance, they’d destroy it right in front of her eyes to get any information out of her. Zuko knew from personal experience how no amount of physical torture could ever compare to watching the last object that tied one’s dead mother to this world get burned.

He couldn’t let anyone else go through what he went through… He wouldn’t.

Reaching for the pendant around the girl’s neck, he undid its knot at the back and put it in his pocket for safety.

Then, he continued searching her body for more injuries. He noticed that the knees of her pants were stained slightly with blood, so he poured the remaining water on them and healed them to the best of his abilities.

He wished he could do more for her. He’d healed her wounds and preserved her mother’s necklace, but what about after he left this room? They were going to keep torturing her until she either spoke or died. And if Zuko knew anything else about the girl other than her being compassionate, it was that she was also as stubborn as a rock—meaning, she’d choose death over letting anyone get to her friend.

So she was going to die anyway? Had he done all this for nothing?

No. He could stop this. Well, not him but his sister could. All he had to do was convince her to order her agents to stop.

_‘Convince Azula to spare someone she doesn’t like? Yeah, good luck with that.’_

He didn’t need luck, he only needed to say the right things and not lose his temper again. He wished he could’ve gotten her out of here as well, but he wasn’t a fool—he knew he’d never be able to give the girl her freedom back. She was going to rot away in prison for months and then become a slave to the one man she hated more than him, but at least she wouldn’t be in any more pain.

Getting into his prince persona again, Zuko turned away from the girl and went out into the prison. He closed the door behind him so the fact that the girl was in a better condition wouldn’t be noticed.

The men standing outside hadn’t moved at all since he’d left. They turned to the Prince and stared at him.

Zuko spoke to the man in black. “This interrogation is over. The prisoner is unconscious, you’re wasting your time.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t take orders from you, child.” 

Zuko stood his ground against the giant man. “I’ll talk with the Princess. She’ll agree with me.” When he saw that the man was obviously unconvinced, he added, knowing he’d probably regret this decision in the future, “If you don’t hear from her within an hour, you may carry on with your work.”

The man closed the distance between him and the Prince with one step, getting into his face and forcing the tiny boy to look up at him due to their height difference. He made Zuko feel like a worthless insect under his ruthless scrutiny.

“You have 30 minutes,” he snarled at last and then turned around and left the prison with big steps.

And with that, the clock began ticking for the Fire Prince.

-o-

A Dai Li agent opened the massive doors to the war room and the agent that had been leading the way since the prison stepped in before the Fire Prince to announce his arrival.

The vast room overlooked the somber scenery of the cityscape, its magnificent view parted with marble columns and the short, green curtains hung between them. In front of him, Azula sat on a long marble table, her legs crossed, elbow placed on one knee, chin resting on her hand. She was staring at an enormous atlas of the world on the floor with lean red and green stones on it while two statues representing the Earth Kingdom laid broken on the floor behind her.

The Head of Dai Li standing next to her nodded to the Fire Prince in acknowledgment while the Princess kept her gaze on the atlas. 

“Did you know what they were doing to her?” Zuko asked as he walked up a set of stairs to get on the same level as his sister, his tone neutral.

Azula looked up from the atlas, the mockery in her growing smile also gleaming in her brown eyes. “Why? Did you faint again?” 

There it was. She was doing it again, playing him. But Zuko had learned his lesson tonight—he wouldn't fall for her trap this time.

“She won’t talk no matter how much you ‘interrogate’ her,” he said calmly, coming to a stop at the edge of the atlas across her.

She shrugged. “If you can’t make someone talk, it means you’re not pushing them enough.”

Zuko sighed as anger threatened to spill over.

“You’ve pushed her enough, Azula. She’s unconscious—she couldn’t say anything even if she wanted to.” He crossed his arms. “Besides, there’s no point in questioning her anyway. You shot the Avatar with _lightning_ over an hour ago. He’s either already reincarnated into one of the Water Tribes or has fled the city by now.”

Azula leaned back on one of her hands and sized her brother up for a good couple of seconds. Zuko could see the gears turning behind her eyes.

Then, she sighed dramatically. “Very well… Since it _is_ a special night and you were so polite, I’ll allow it.” She addressed the agent standing behind him, “Take the prisoner to her cell.”

The man bowed to her and turned to take his leave.

That was it? That was all it took to convince Azula? Zuko had hoped he could change her mind, but… he didn’t actually think he could do it _this_ quickly. Wasn’t she going to attack him for telling her to do something? Tell him he was weak for pitying the waterbender? Threaten him with telling Father about this? Why would she be so nice? She was never nice, not unless she was playing into something.

And just as this thought had crossed his mind, she spoke up once more.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” she held up her hand as the agent was about to step out of the room, causing him to stop and turn around. She looked at the agent with an artificial sweetness. “Please do make sure to give our lovely guest a _warm_ welcome to her new home, will you? We wouldn’t want her to be left... unsatisfied with her stay here.” She locked eyes with her brother and tilted her head. “Isn’t that right, Zuzu?”

Zuko tried his best to stay calm, but the anger in his voice was evident. “You _just_ said you wouldn’t hurt her.”

His sister’s brows furrowed innocently. “Hurt her?” She put her hand on her chest to display her offense at the comment. “Whyever would I wanna do that, Zuzu? I only said to give her a warm welcome... I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it, but it’s called hospitality.” Suddenly dropping her innocent act, she motioned to the agent with her head to leave. As the man bowed again and walked out the door, her gaze moved back to the atlas in front of her. “Now, if there isn’t anything else, you may take your leave. I have a city to rule.”

Zuko knew his sister well enough to know that the conversation was over. Anything he'd say from now would just be wasting his breath. He also knew he couldn’t justify defending the waterbender any longer. If he kept going, it’d come back to bite both him and the girl in the arse in the future.

As he turned on his heels and began his way out of the room, an agent standing guard beside the doors opening the doors for him, he pondered what his sister had meant by ‘warm welcome’. Was that some sort of a twisted metaphor for ‘go throw the girl into a freezing room and leave her there for all eternity’? Now _that_ was something he’d expect from his sister, not her actually caring about the girl’s comfort.

Just when he'd stepped into the hallway, he heard his sister sing after him, “Goodnight, Zuzu. Sleep well.”

He didn’t bother to turn around, he already knew she was smirking. Instead, he sighed and left the room.

Whatever it was she’d ordered the agent to do wasn’t going to be good. All Zuko could do now was hope that they wouldn’t hurt the waterbender too much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, siambre here.
> 
> So… uh… yeah. We’re slowly getting into the ‘dark themes’ I was talking about in the summary. And believe me when I say it'll only get darker from here. Meaning that the ‘Goodnight, Zuzu. Sleep well,’ line might have more than one meaning to it.
> 
> The prison I described is the same prison Long Feng was in (the only difference being that the fifth door in the show did have a barred window) and the war room was the place where Katara had the meeting with the Council of Five. So, if you wanna see what they look like, they both appear in episode 02x19 “The Guru”—the war room at around 03:50 and the prison at 22:32 (the prison also appears in episodes 02x18 and 02x20).
> 
> Anyways, thank you so so much for sticking with me and I’ll see you later!


	3. Chapter 3

Katara looked around desperately, unsure where she was—an endless maze of twisting streets, lined with buildings casting menacing shadows everywhere. She was running away from… someone or something, though she couldn't remember who or what.

“How could you do this to me, Katara?” a voice said from behind her, not a single note of emotion present in it.

She whipped around to see him standing in the dark void, his pale skin contrasting the shadows, clothes burned just like the way she’d left him in that house. With white eyes and a glare, he gazed into her soul—instead of the combined power of the previous Avatars, however, it was death that gleamed in his eyes.

“How could you let them kill me?” he asked, his lips not moving as he spoke.

Katara tried to take a step toward him, tell him she was sorry as if that would make a difference, but found herself paralyzed in her place when two sets of hands latched onto her legs, crawling up her shins like spiders. Looking down, she saw two Dai Li agents she’d killed staring back at her, their eyes white just like her friend’s.

Their faces slowly turned purple, swelling and rotting, the elaborate weaving of the muscles underneath their skin surfacing as they decomposed before her eyes. Their eyes began melting, the liquid trapped inside them trickling down their temples, leaving behind empty dark pits in their stead, and blood started dripping down their noses and out of the sides of their gaping mouths.

An endless flow of blood was gushing out of the wounds on their necks, chests, and stomachs—wounds her ice daggers had created. They left stains of black on their dark green uniforms and a growing pool of blood spreading on the ground, transforming the stones of the pavement beneath her feet into a crimson bog, pulling at her feet, sucking her under.

Cruel laughter echoed from everywhere and nowhere at once, and sharp pains assailed her, all over, with no apparent source. A Dai Li agent materialized from the shadows right in front of her, one that she’d never seen before, his hands clasped behind him, head bowed down, face concealed by his wide helmet. When he slowly raised his head, a pair of golden eyes came to light, one of them contorted by the scar around it into a permanent glare, the other gleaming with malice as he leered at her, his pointy teeth as sharp as knives. 

The figure stood before her, enjoying the show as she sank deeper and deeper into the thick fluid, then suddenly lunged forward, too-hot hands spouting red and blue flames, cascading all over her.

Katara wanted to scream, wriggle out of the bruising grasp of the dead men, protect her face from the onslaught of fire, run away, do something, _anything_ , but not a single muscle in her body would obey her commands—she could only stand there and watch the colorful flames whirl around her while her lungs filled with blood. The burning concentrated in her right hand, blinding her in a white, hot agony, and she drowned in the blood of the men whose lives she’d taken.

As her lungs collapsed in on themselves and the inferno within her hand continued its rampage up her fingers, the scream swelling in her throat was smothered by the blood, inaudible in the hellish situation as she suffocated—but it managed to follow her into the waking world, into a freezing, pitch-black room, echoing off the walls.

Her heart pounded a mile a minute in her ears as she laid there—wherever ‘there’ was—frozen in place, trembling with terror, tears running down her cheeks even though she wasn’t crying. Cold sweat coated every patch of her skin despite the cool temperature of the room, and she was panting heavily as if to make up for those moments she wasn’t able to breathe in the nightmare. She could see, in her periphery, shadows dancing in the darkness of the room, circling her shivering body like runaway spirits from the Spirit World.

Katara waited for everything to pass, not that she had any other choice. This wasn’t the first nightmare she’d lived through, but it was, by far, the worst. At least now, she knew what to do from experience. Closing her eyes, she took deep, calming breaths.

As her heart slowed down to a more reasonable tempo, she gradually became more aware of her surroundings.

The room wasn’t entirely pitch-black as she’d previously thought—Green light spilled inside from the barred windows of the door, casting the room in a dim glow. And although this narrow, metal box of a room didn't have any windows to the world outside, she could tell by the lack of the power of the moon in her veins that it wasn't night-time anymore.

The next thing that her mind registered was the scratchy texture of the rough mat she was lying on and the thin, threadbare blanket that had been tossed over her, making her bare arms and legs itch to the point where she could have clawed her skin off to relieve it. When she recoiled and threw the cover off of herself as a reflex, the soreness in her limbs made itself known, pulsing out through her body with each breath she took.

Wincing from the unpleasant sensation, she inhaled sharply through her nose, which sent a stab of pain through her skull. The pain receded fairly quickly, but it lasted long enough for her to notice how odd it felt, like having a broken but _partially_ healed nose.

Gradually, aches and pains and stiffness on other parts of her face began surfacing in her nightmare fogged mind—her lip and left cheek, mainly. They stung and itched as if they too had been injured and partly healed.

How it was possible for a wound to be healed halfway, or why she’d be healed in the first place, she had no idea. She didn't even know how she'd gotten those wounds. The last vivid memory she had was her getting caught by that agent that’d chased her around the streets of Ba Sing Se—the events ensuing it were chopped up into bits and pieces, and the things she did remember were but a frenzied flash of visions. She wasn't entirely sure if they were even real or a product of her imagination.

The first memory she had taking place after getting knocked out was a brief sequence of her being dragged by her hair through… somewhere with a curved, metal ceiling, and the man dragging her telling her to shut up. Judging by the throbbing at her scalp, she presumed that this really had happened. And then there was another flash of memory without context—A giant man in a black outfit standing by a fireplace, holding a long, lean piece of metal above a green fire, demanding the location of the Avatar.

Katara didn’t remember what had happened after that, but, as the memory played in her mind, a twinge of pain in her vocal cords and a similar one in her right hand shot up to her brain. It didn’t hurt as much as her nose or lips, but it wasn’t the best feeling in the world either, and the fact that she could feel just how far the stinging went up her fingers didn’t help. 

Grunting in pain, she clutched the stinging hand, still shaking with the adrenaline pumping through her veins, to her chest. Once she was feeling less like she might pass out again, she sat up to inspect whatever was going on with her hand. Her eyes widened in horror at the sight.

Somewhat hardened flesh had replaced three of her nails. On top of that, her palm was swollen, and a strip of bruising was now encircling her wrist. Three tiny, oval-shaped patches of scar tissue stood out at the very tips of her fingers, right under where the nails were supposed to be, as if something had been removed from inside them and then the skin around them had stitched back together. And the longer she gazed at her hand, the more intense the pain became.

Turning away from the grisly sight, Katara examined her other hand. It had the same bruising, but it wasn’t swollen, nor was it missing any nails.

Why not? It didn’t take a genius to figure out what the Dai Li had done to her to get to Aang, so why stop at only three fingers? Why not finish what they’d started? What, did they see that she wouldn’t spill anything and just… give up? But these were the Dai Li—they _never_ gave up. Why hadn’t they continued doing whatever they were doing to her to the end? Also, if they had inserted something into her fingertips, how come those wounds didn’t hurt as much as the ones her face did?

As she kept examining her hands and puzzling over what had taken place, something else drew her attention. She was wearing a dress—a brown prisoner's dress with fraying, unhemmed edges that she wasn’t wearing last night, and she didn’t have either of her bindings on.

Her heart began pounding in her chest once again. _Someone_ had to have taken her clothes off to put this ragged dress on her. She prayed to all the spirits out there that it was _her_ who’d done that. It wasn’t _impossible_ for her to have forgotten this, right? She didn’t have big chunks of memory from the night before—this could just be yet another detail her brain had chosen to discard. Besides, the Dai Li might’ve been horrible people, but they were just that—people. No one with a beating heart would strip a girl naked while she was unconscious. That was just… No. They wouldn’t do that.

As her eyes continued moving down her body, checking for any other injuries or marks she couldn't explain, she noticed half-healed scrapes on her knees, more stripe-like bruises around her shins, and a dark stain on the brown fabric right where her legs met. She took a closer look at the stain, her brows furrowing. The lingering coppery smell coming from the blackish stain made comprehension dawn—blood. And her suspicions were confirmed when she lifted the skirt and saw rivers of blood that’d leaked from between her legs and then dried on the insides of her thighs, also staining the coarse mat she was sitting on.

This didn’t make any sense… It’d only been a week since she’d last gotten her period, and her moon cycle was normally pretty regular. But what else could this be? It'd explain her cramps as well. Well, now that she thought about it, she actually wouldn't classify what she felt as cramps, as they were considerably more painful—like a fire searing her from the inside instead of a simple throb—and a lot lower on her abdomen—all the way down at the opening between her legs, in fact. 

And there was also this strange tenderness on her inner thighs. Squinting in the dim green light, she could just make out bruises on either leg. They were a strange shape, splayed and spider-like, sort of like hands, the same on each leg, but her dazed and pain-wracked mind couldn't grasp what they were, only that they were familiar, and that she _should_ have known what they were.

Out of nowhere, an anguished scream echoed in her mind, a tearful plea of a girl begging for someone to stop, and a mental image of a Dai Li agent, the same one from her nightmare, flashed before her eyes. The imposing figure was standing in the doorway of the room she was in, staring at her where she laid on the mat, eyes gleaming maliciously from under his helmet.

Katara’s stomach turned over at the vision. Bile rose in her throat, and it was all she could do to swallow it back down.

A loud bang came from the metal door in front of her, clamoring thunderously in the empty room, effectively putting an end to her thoughts before they could even fully form in her mind. She flinched at the sudden sound and immediately covered up the most exposed parts of her body.

Looking up, she saw an agent, a different one from the one in her visions, staring back at her from behind the barred window on the door. She couldn’t wrap her head around the reason, but the sight of a man in a Dai Li uniform sent ice-cold shivers down her spine, raw terror making her stomach churn.

“I’ll only say this once, so listen carefully,” the man started, and as he continued, an invisible weight pressed down on Katara’s chest, getting heavier by the second. “On Princess Azula’s orders, you’ll be given food and water every two days. You will finish your food within 5 minutes and then slide the tray under the door. When we're holding out the water to you, you will grab the bars on the door and drink it between them—try and let go of the bars, and all of your fingers will be broken one by one. You will sleep on your back with your hands outside the cover, palms open and facing the ceiling. You will not lay down during the day. You will not speak to yourself or sing. And when you need to use the bathroom, you will knock on the door twice. If you don’t comply with anything we say, you’ll be punished severely. Understood?”

By the time he’d finished, the weight atop Katara’s chest felt as heavy as an arctic hippo, cutting off the air supply from her lungs. It was only after she’d managed to let out the shaky breath clogging up her windpipe that she was able to breathe again.

Another thunderous bang on the door, and she flinched again, a small yelp escaping her lips.

“I asked you a question, little girl,” the agent spat out, taking a step closer to the door.

Katara wasn’t stupid, she knew he wasn’t joking or exaggerating in any way—if she didn’t do the things he’d said, she really _would_ be punished severely.

Without looking up, she shook her head in a small nod, then, realizing he couldn't see that, managed to rasp out a soft “Yes.”

“Good.” He stepped away from the door. “Your first meal will be served tomorrow.”

Katara listened as his footsteps got quieter and quieter until a door not too far away clanged shut, and silence once again took the reins in her lonely prison cell.

Leaning back on the wall beside her, she brought her stinging legs to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, the burning at the pit of her navel seeming much less important now. She settled her forehead on the scraped skin of her knees with a heavy sigh.

What was she going to do now? Was she going to spend the rest of her days in this dark prison cell, never getting to see the light of day ever again? Was this really how she was to live from now on, being monitored all hours of the day, forbidden from even laying down whenever she wanted to?

No. Aang was going to end the war one day and rescue her from here—this was the whole reason she’d ended up here in the first place. He was going to defeat the Fire Lord and then he was going to come here and save her. He had to… or she was going to rot away in here. She was an optimist, but even she had to admit that there was simply no way she could get out of here on her own.

First of all, she didn’t know where she was. Was she under Lake Laogai? No, they’d destroyed it after they’d gotten exposed… A prison in the Lower Ring? She didn’t remember seeing any prisons in the entire month she’d been in the city… Well, wherever she was didn’t really matter anyway—too many obstacles stood in her way no matter her location.

She had the door of her cell and the one outside she’d just heard close to get through for one, and no access to any sort of liquid. It wasn’t like she could gather water from the air either—it was cold in the room, and cold temperatures didn’t hold as much moisture in the air as warmer one.

Even if she somehow did manage to gather enough water from somewhere, what was she going to do then? There were who knew how many agents standing guard outside. She couldn’t just take on multiple master earthbenders as organized and dangerous as the Dai Li with a bubble of water to defend herself.

Say, the spirits were gracious that day and _everything_ went perfectly according to plan and she got out of the prison, there were still the Inner and Outer walls of the city she had to get past before she was completely free…

Her only chance to escape the city had been with Appa, and it was too late for that now.

She was stuck here.

Tears gathered in her eyes and began a slow descent down her button nose, dripping onto the fabric of her dress where it laid bunched up between her hips and bent legs.

Aang was her only hope for rescue, and he was dead.

No, he wasn’t dead. She’d healed him. He was okay. Sokka and Toph had saved him. They were on Appa right now, roaming the skies, having fun and joking around like the old times… But they wouldn’t be joking around, would they? They didn’t know what had happened to her or where she was—their concern over her wouldn’t allow for any fun.

Oh, spirits… What if they thought she was dead? What would Sokka do? Would he stop eating again? After Mom had died and Dad had gone away for war, it’d taken Katara and Gran Gran an entire _week_ to get him back on track with his usual diet.

Well, he wasn’t on his own, at least. Toph was with him. She’d force-feed him if need be. And Aang was there too. He’d tell him that starving himself because of her wasn’t what she wanted, that what she really wanted was for them to go to the Fire Nation and wipe the floor with the Fire Lord, not mourning after her.

For what could have been minutes or hours, thoughts of her friends and brother kept circling in her mind, making her feel forgotten and alone as she sat huddled in her empty prison cell, tears pouring down her face. The invisible weight from before returned in the shape of a hand, wrapping around her heart, squeezing it until it turned to dust.

Lifting shaking fingers up to her neck, Katara thought of her beautiful mother, taking comfort in knowing that she was always there with her, no matter what. But, instead of the engraved surface of the pendant she was expecting, her fingers grazed her bare throat.

Her eyes snapped open. She jerked upright and searched frantically with her hands for the necklace that was no longer there. Feeling nothing but her skin, she rocked forward onto her knees, onto the metal floor beside the mat, not caring how her knees throbbed as she put her entire weight on them or how her intimate regions stung more than ever with her sharp movements. Her hands scrabbled over the mat and then rifled through the covers she’d thrown aside like a madwoman, panic growing in her heart and washing away any other feeling she might’ve otherwise had. When nothing came of her search, she shook the mat and the covers up in the air, hoping desperately for one piece of jewelry in particular to fall to the floor, but all of her efforts ended in vain.

Knotting her fingers in her hair in agitation, she gazed around the empty room, as if she could make the pendant appear out of thin air just by looking—but all she saw was metal of the floors, walls, and ceiling, illuminated by the reflection of the green light coming from outside the door.

It was gone. The last piece of her mother was gone. Just like that. There was nothing left of her now.

As the realization set in, gravity itself became too strong of a foe, and she fell on her side, too overwhelmed with grief and despair to care about the cold metal floor pressing against her cheek.

They’d killed her again. The Fire Nation had killed her mother _again_.

Curling into a fetal position, Katara squeezed her eyes shut and keened in sorrow, her tears flowing down her cheeks more forcefully than before. As her sobs shook her whole body and her tears pooled on the ground beside her, the quiet whimpers spilling from her lips got lost in the smothering silence of the prison cell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Idk if I should start this off on a happy note, so... um... hi.
> 
> I hope you liked this chapter—it sure wasn't easy for me to write. Also, I'm aware I merely glossed over what happened to her the night before, but know that this won't be the last we hear of this.
> 
> With that out of the way, let me apologize for updating so slowly. As I said before, this is my first ever fanfic (like, it's literally my first attempt at spending time and effort on writing something outside of school), so I'm learning things as I go and constantly trying to improve myself, and slows down my writing speed. Also, I was a bit busy during my idle period—I had my finals, and then wrote down all my ideas for the future on a detailed outline (which, it turns out, takes a while to do), co-wrote 2 other ATLA fics with Ilya_Boltagon (you can go and check them out on my profile), and am almost finished with a 10k+ word Zutara smut (which will be uploaded before the next chapter is posted).
> 
> Speaking of future chapters, I already wrote most of the next one, as well as the 12 chapters after it, on the outline, so, hopefully, my updating frequency will increase from now.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading and I'll see you soon!


	4. Chapter 4

The Fire Prince’s gaze was cast on the marble steps leading up to a fancy building on the palace grounds as he followed a servant up the stairs, trying in vain to stop his thoughts from wandering off to the dreadful nightmare he’d just woken up from.

No matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried, he simply couldn’t get the image of his uncle encased up to his neck in glowing crystals, turning his head away in disappointment, out of his mind—in the waking world or otherwise. Now, he was no stranger to disappointing people, the scar marring nearly half of his face and his father’s acrimonious remarks that constantly circled in his head never failed to remind him of that, but seeing his uncle like that, the same uncle that had thrown his whole life away just to be at his side in his banishment, stung on a different level. 

And to make matters even worse, the Water Tribe girl had made an appearance in his nightmare as well, and what an appearance it was. They were in the crystal catacombs, imprisoned together, as those vast oceans that her eyes gazed into his. Her cool fingers had come up to graze the rough, pitted surface of his scar, and relaxing under her tender caress, his eyes had closed of their own accord. But immediately after that, the chill of the air in the caves had shifted into stifling humidity, and when he’d opened his eyes, they had changed location. They were in a cell now, its walls covered with black leathers, the fireplace on his left lighting up the small, dark room in a haunting, green glow. She was sitting on a metal chair, head hung, her whole body covered in blood, with needles sticking out of her fingertips. Then, as quick as lightning, she’d snapped her head up, bolted to her feet, and right as she was about to drive the needles inside her hands into his heart, he’d jerked awake, chest heaving and coated in his sweat.

Zuko shuddered at the mere memory of the nightmare. All he wanted right now was to stay in his bed and be left to wallow in his misery, but here he was, on his way to the dining hall as his sister had ‘kindly requested’ he be present at breakfast. Because of course she had—Agni forbid he might want to be left alone, in whatever peace he had.

As the servant he’d been following reached the top of the stairs, he decided to busy his mind with what he’d be eating at breakfast instead. He hadn’t eaten anything since leaving the Jasmine Dragon to come here to this palace yesterday afternoon, and after fighting with the Avatar, not to mention all the things proceeding that with Uncle and the waterbender, he was absolutely _famished_.

The two Dai Li agents standing guard at the entry of the hall opened the elegant double doors for the Prince, who kept glowering down at the ground, while the servant stayed outside. 

“Well, well…” his sister snakily remarked as he set foot in the building. “Look who’s decided to grace us with his presence… We were beginning to think you’d ditched us, Zuzu.”

Before Zuko could look up at her, or even begin to wonder who these ‘we’ and ‘us’ were, a girly squeal of his name reached his ears. In the split second he’d been lifting his head to check out who was calling for him, a flurry of pink leaped in the air, landed right in front of him, then two strong arms wrapped around him and pulled him down for a bone-crushing hug. 

“Hey… Ty Lee…” he choked out through the suffocating arms wrapped around his neck. He patted his long-time friend on the back awkwardly as his way of hugging back, and also as a silent plea for her to slacken her hold and let him breathe again. 

Ty Lee drew back from their embrace with a huge grin on her face, though he doubted she was even aware she’d just strangled the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation. 

“It’s so great to see you again!” she chirped, squeezing his shoulders affectionately. “Wow, you’ve gotten so tall! How’re you? How’ve you been? Did you travel to a lot of places? Did you meet a lot of people? Ooh! What was the weirdest food you tried? Oh wait, you were at the Northern Water Tribe during the invasion, right? Was it really as cold as they say? They say they have houses of ice there! That’s crazy! I mean, doesn’t the ice melt in the summer? Ugh, do you remember the summers back home? It gets _so_ hot. But I like the weather here. It’s cool and the humidity is really nice too. At least you don’t start sweating the moment you come out of the shower here, am I right?”

A fed-up sigh sounded from the middle of the spacious hall. 

“Will you hush, Ty? Let him breathe a little.”

Zuko looked over his friend’s shoulder to see another childhood friend, looking gloomy as she often had, seated beside his sister at a long, luxurious wooden table. The long locks of her jet-black hair she’d let flow down her shoulders framed her striking, somber features, and her porcelain skin glowed in the soft rays of the dawning sun. And while Ty Lee hadn't changed much over the years, the childish roundness of Mai's face had given way to a sharp jawline and even sharper slope to her nose.

Turning around to face her, Ty Lee put her fists on her hips. “What? Can I not be excited to see one of my best friends for the first time in three years?”

Mai rolled her eyes and went back to eating her breakfast. “Whatever.”

Ty Lee looped her arm around Zuko’s and started walking them to the table.

“Don’t listen to her, Zuko,” assured him, speaking in a hushed tone only he could hear, “she’s missed you too.” Her grin turned mischievous and she wiggled her brows. “She’s missed you _a lot_.”

Zuko peeped at the girl in question once more. Contrary to what their mutual friend had insinuated, however, she didn’t seem at all enthusiastic to have seen him. By the looks of her, staring down at her plate and politely chewing on her food, she seemed more like they’d been hanging out every day and this was just another morning. But he didn’t give much thought to it—he already had a lot on his mind, and stuffing his mouth with those delicious smelling dumplings was his main priority at the moment.

As they neared the table, Ty Lee untangled herself from his arm and sat down across from Mai, and he walked over to the head of the table to sit opposite his sister, who’d been quietly watching the whole interaction and eating her meal, not a trace of emotion on her face. One of the many maids standing by the walls walked up to the young prince and lifted the golden lid off of his plate as he sat down, then went back to her spot beside the wall with practiced, silent steps. 

Cozily settling down on his chair, Zuko went to pick up his chopsticks with his right hand, then realized his foolishness at the last second, and switched hands.

“What’s with the bandages, Zuzu?” his sister asked casually, focused on her food rather than her brother.

At her question, the other girls’ attention snapped to the bandages on his right hand—the hand he’d burned the night before while cooling down the needles inside the waterbender’s fingers. 

Ty Lee gasped. “Zuko! Are you okay?!”

Zuko hastily hid his hand under the table and uttered, “It’s nothing. I’m fine,” before going on to eat his food.

“Oh, so you bandage your hand for fun…” Mai said dryly.

He sent her an annoyed look and swallowed his dumpling, then picked up another one. “I just accidentally cut myself this morning. That’s all.”

Azula locked eyes with him. And although her face still lacked emotion, the knowing gleam in her eyes showed the true danger that stormed beneath the tranquility of her features.

“Cut yourself this morning, have you?” She tilted her head. “That's odd. I could’ve _sworn_ I saw wounds on that very hand last night _after_ you came back from your little visit to the Water Tribe peasant.”

Zuko froze, the dumpling he’d been bringing to his mouth hanging in the air before his face. Then, as his sister broke into a smirk, his eyes shot to his plate and he cleared his throat. 

“You saw wrong.”

The Princess didn’t take her scrutinizing eyes off of her brother as she set her chopsticks down on the table and interlaced her fingers before her, all the while Zuko was doing his best to look innocent, trying nonchalantly to eat his meal, staring at his plate and nowhere else. 

“The thing is, dear brother,” she started, resting her chin atop her interlaced fingers, “little birdies told me you asked for a bucket of water while you were at the prison, and they also said the peasant was in a better condition after you left. Apparently, she even woke up for a short while.”

Zuko prayed to Agni the heat he felt spreading on his cheeks wasn’t visible to her, even though he knew it wouldn’t make much of a difference anyway—she’d always read him like an open book whether he showed his feelings or not.

He looked away. “I just wanted to wake her up and interrogate her myself, so I splashed her with some cold water… She must’ve woken up later.”

“Mhmm…” Azula stared down at him with mocking eyes. “The human body works in such mysterious ways, doesn’t it?”

He opened his mouth, hoping he could somehow come up with a lie on the spot, but his sister spoke before he did. 

“But you needn’t fret, brother,” she said, breaking eye contact and picking up her chopsticks from the table, the danger behind her eyes having been dissipated, “Dad won’t hear of this little incident. Me and my birdies will stay quiet. And you,” she addressed the maids lining the walls over her shoulder, her voice suddenly as cold as ice, “none of you will speak of this to anyone. For your and your families’ sake. Understood?” As the maids gave her nervous curtsies, she turned back to her brother. “Oh, quit gaping, Zuzu. You’re my brother—of course I’m looking out for you.”

Only after a good second was Zuko able to pick up his jaw from the floor. He was overjoyed that she’d chosen to spare him from her—or worse, Father’s—wrath, but at the same time confused as to _why_ she would’ve done that. He’d never known her to be the merciful or caring type, and this was the second instance where she’d turned a blind eye to something he’d done that would normally be considered treacherous in the span of less than half a day—the first being agreeing to end the waterbender’s ‘interrogation’.

The Princess eyed her brother. “I see you need a minute to collect your thoughts. Ty Lee,” she turned to her friend, “why don’t you fill little Zuzu here on what you’ve been up to all these years? I’m sure he’s dying to hear _all_ of it.”

Ty Lee, glancing back and forth at the royal siblings anxiously, jumped at the opportunity to ease up the tense air that had gathered around the table. “Of course! Hmm… Where was I when Zuko left… Oh, right, I was still at the Royal Academy!”

And so, she started jabbering on about how, once she’d graduated from the academy, she’d joined a circus and traveled across the colonies in extreme—and mostly unnecessary—detail, waving her arms around in a grandiose fashion to dramatize her points.

While she babbled on in the background, Zuko nodded and “Hmm”ed and gave one-word replies at the times that felt the most appropriate as he and the others finished their breakfast, but he was more focused on the fact that Azula had figured out that he’d helped the waterbender. She now had a strong case of blackmail to use against him, and the scars on his hand were all the evidence she’d need—though, something told him Father wouldn’t care for any evidence to finish what he’d started during the Agni Kai.

Well, as long as Zuko didn’t step out of line or anger his sister, he shouldn’t have anything to worry about—or so he told himself—so, he might as well enjoy his expertly prepared meal. He may not be awfully proud of how he’d gotten his status as the crown prince back, but he had to admit he’d missed these top-notch meals that came with being royalty, especially after nearly starving to death on multiple occasions in the last few months.

However, even though he had muted out Ty Lee’s ramblings early into her monologue, there was something else that kept drawing his attention away from his food, or rather _someone_ else.

Having grown up as a prince and a soldier, a formidable one at that, he was trained to notice if he was being spied on, hence he caught the hasty glances Mai was stealing from him. The first few glances, he didn’t understand, but as she kept doing it over and over again, he realized the reasoning behind her curious ganders—It was his scar. This was the first time she’d seen it. He’d been banished before anyone from home, with the exception of his physicians and uncle, could get a glimpse of the horror Father had wrought on his face, and he couldn’t blame her wanting to look at it. And what other reason could she possibly have to check him out? At least she didn’t grimace or pity him, which was more than what he could say for most other people.

“And then, we crossed the Great Divide,” Ty Lee chattered on, her food only half-eaten, “but there really wasn’t much to see except for some big, ugly, crawling monsters, so I’m just gonna skip that part. After there, we went to this village, and it was in this forest that had all these huge trees with red leaves, and they were _gorgeous_. I wish you could've seen them too. Though I did hear some maniac blew up a dam there a little after we left and destroyed part of the forest, but why anyone would ruin such a pretty thing is beyond me. Anywho, we stayed at that village for—”

“These are all very amazing stories, Ty,” Azula cut in, dabbing at her mouth with her napkin, cutting her friend's babbling short, “but as much as I'd love to sit here and listen to your wonderful adventures, I’m afraid Zuzu and I have to get going. We're expected at a war meeting.”

Ty Lee's face fell and she murmured a quiet “Okay” while Zuko looked at his sister questioningly. 

“We are?”

Azula rolled her eyes. “Yes, Dum-Dum. You’re the crown prince—your place is by my side while I finish conquering this great city. And stop speaking with your mouth full. Have you no manners?”

Zuko sent her a glare, then tossed one last dumpling into his mouth before getting up. The moment he pushed his chair back, all the maids curtsied, then they curtsied once more when their Princess got to her feet.

“We’ll see you two at dinner,” Azula said to her friends, then turned to her brother. “Come, Zuzu, time to go.”

-o-

After the royals had left the dining hall for the war room, time flew by as they, with the help of the Head of the Dai Li, discussed strategies for the enforcement of their occupation of the Earth Kingdom capital, along with the rest of its unoccupied lands, in meetings that lasted for hours on end. And before Zuko knew it, he’d had dinner with the girls, where he’d, once again, played the glancing game with Mai, while Ty Lee had continued telling stories from her time with the circus, and had just come back to his room.

While the endless meetings had bored him out of his mind, at least they had kept him busy enough that he hadn’t really gotten a chance to think of anything but moving troops around and deciding on the right time frame for them to secure their rule here and go back to the Fire Nation before they’d be ‘invaded’ in exactly 3 months. But now, as he sat alone in his room, watching the moon rise over the magnificent scenery of the Upper Ring, he couldn’t help but allow the thoughts he’d been pushing aside all day to come forth—thoughts of how, or if, Father was going to welcome him home, of how his uncle was faring in prison and just how much he hated Zuko now, and there was, of course, the waterbender.

Reaching into the layers of his robes, he took out the necklace he’d been carrying with him throughout the day in case a servant had stumbled upon it while tidying his room. His eyes locked onto the pendant as his thumb grazed the intricate grooves carved into it, the rock cool and soothing beneath his touch.

Despite his better judgment, he wondered how the waterbender was doing. Azula had said she’d woken up for a while during the night, so that was a good sign, right? But… what if the healing he’d done hadn’t helped with her pain and she’d woken up _because_ of her agony?

And there was also this ‘warm welcome’ his sister had ordered be given to her. What if this welcome was to be warm literally? There was a fireplace in that dreadful room she tormented in—it was entirely possible for them to get her warm with that fire. Oh Agni… had they hurt her more than they were initially going to do with those needles? Had he done the wrong thing by trying to help her?

“Prince Zuko,” a palace guard called from the other side of the doors of his bedroom, breaking Zuko’s train of thought. “Lady Mai is here, sir. She is asking for an audience.”

Zuko’s brows furrowed. Why would she want to speak with him?

Quickly putting the pendant away in one of the drawers of his desk, he got up from his chair and clasped his hands behind him, hoping his false confidence would conceal his ongoing inner turmoil about the Water Tribe girl. 

“Let her in.”

No sooner had the last word had come out of his mouth than the doors opened to reveal Mai, standing tall and proud in the doorway, like a true noble should. And behind her, he caught a glimpse of a maid carrying a silver tray, though Mai’s lean frame obscured what stood atop it.

Without waiting for him to invite her in as the palace rules demanded, she stepped into the room with her head held high, not even bothering to curtsy, while the maid stayed out in the hallway. And Zuko was happy that she hadn’t curtsied to him—enough people already did that, which kind of unsettled him after living in the streets for months, and it was nice to know he had friends that saw the real him under his newly-reacquired title.

She stopped a couple steps in, a tinge of eagerness betraying her stoic expression.

“Hi, Zuko.”

Zuko briefly glanced at the maid behind her before turning his attention back to her. “Hey.” 

His curiosity must’ve shown on his face as she stepped aside with a small, knowing smile on her lips, revealing the objects on top of the tray the maid carried—A large glass bottle with cloudy red liquid swirling inside, and two wide glasses, some golden plates topped with beverages, and a golden bowl with a lid laying beside it. 

“Just thought we could do something fun to celebrate your return,” she explained.

Ah. The Fire Prince looked around his scarcely furnished room for a good place to host his guest, then turned to the maid once he’d found it. “You may place the tray on the desk.”

As quiet as a spirit, the maid came into the room, did as she was told, then backed away until she was out in the hallway again, her head bowed at all times. Once the guards outside closed the doors behind her, the two teenagers, now left all alone in the room, stared at one another awkwardly, grey eyes meeting gold.

Realizing she was waiting for him to start the conversation, Zuko cleared his throat and held a hand out toward the desk. “Please, come in.” 

As she started walking to him, she asked, “How’re you?”

“Fine,” he shrugged. “You?”

“Same.” She came to a stop beside the table, then reached for the bottle, removed its cork, and poured them both a glass. 

“So,” she began, spearing him with her eyes as she moved on to the second glass, “are you gonna tell me what really happened to your hand? Don’t worry, I won’t tell Azula.”

Zuko unconsciously brought his injured hand behind him, out of her line of sight. “It’s just a cut like I said.”

“Uh huh…” She set the bottle down, then removed the lid of a golden bowl next to it and put large chunks of ice inside the glasses. “You should ask Azula to teach you a thing or two about lying. It’s a real life-saver.”

He chuckled as she handed him his drink, but then involuntarily grimaced as the pungent smell of alcohol wafting from his glass overwhelmed his senses.

“You’ve never drunk whiskey before?” Mai asked, raising a brow.

Feeling a little self-conscious under her questioning gaze, he rubbed the back of his neck, being careful to not let his bandages rub against his skin. “I’ve… never really drunk _any_ alcohol before.”

She blinked. “Let me get this straight—You were out on the sea for _three years_ with a group of ex-convicts as your crew, and you never once drank _anything_?”

He shrugged. “My uncle kept their ‘unwanted behaviors’ away from me. He called alcohol ‘desperate man’s poison’ and always talked about how ‘many a great man has ruined themselves with this poison.’”

“Huh. He’s a wise man.”

“Yeah…” Zuko said. A tiny smile danced on his lips as the many memories he had of Uncle sipping his tea and pumping out one proverb after another played before his eyes. “He is…”

His small moment of sweet nostalgia was quickly wiped away, however, when he remembered what he’d done to his beloved uncle in return for his neverending wisdom and love.

Noticing a sudden sullen mood wash over him, Mai changed the subject. “Well, if you don’t wanna drink, we can just sit and talk.”

“No,” Zuko replied firmly, then realized how harsh he’d sounded. Softening his expression and tone, he looked at her. “I’m gonna start drinking eventually—I’d rather have my first drink with someone I trust.”

Although her face held its blank indifference, the faint blush blossoming on her cheeks didn’t escape his attention.

She cleared her throat and raised her glass. “Cheers to you, then—for getting your honor and your throne back.”

With a sad-tinted smile, he clinked glasses with her. Then, before the discouraging smell of the whiskey could convince him otherwise, Zuko downed his drink in one huge gulp—and immediately regretted his decision. The whiskey burned his tongue first and his throat second, leaving behind a horrible taste in his mouth. As it made its way down to his stomach, he could feel the warmth surge down his esophagus and had to cover his mouth in order to stop himself from vomiting all over the girl standing before him.

“It’s not water, Zuko, don’t drink it like it is,” he heard Mai tease. “Here. Eat this.”

He opened his eyes, though he hadn’t even realized he’d closed them, he saw her offering a plate of tiny jam tarts with a smile on her face. Without missing a beat, he grabbed a handful of the tarts and tossed them into his mouth. It didn’t erase the horrific taste off of his tongue, but its sweetness did, thankfully, decrease its intensity.

“Why in the world would anyone willingly drink this?!” he shouted once his churning stomach calmed down.

Mai chuckled softly, placing the plate back on the tray. “Just wait till it hits you and then you’ll understand why.” As she sipped her own drink, her cheerful features morphed into a slightly worried one. “How are you really, Zuko? People don’t drink whiskey like that unless they’ve got some problems.”

Chucking another jam tart into his mouth, he leaned back on the edge of the desk beside her, gazing down at the empty glass he held on his lap, eyes unfocused as he got lost in the depths of his mind. 

“We’d be stuck in here for days if I start telling you how I’m really feeling…”

Mai rarely felt any emotion at all anymore, but her heart ached for her friend, for the tragedy behind his words, the melancholy in his voice, the clouds gathering before his ember eyes—those vivid eyes she remembered so well, long lost to time…

So, to lift his spirits, and maybe to satisfy the urge she’d had for years, she did the first thing that came to mind. And just as she’d intended, whatever Zuko had been thinking a second ago vanished the moment she pressed her lips against his. 

Their chaste kiss didn’t last longer than a second, but it was enough to paralyze the Prince and wipe his mind blank. His mouth opened and closed silently, unable to produce speech, as she drew back. His lungs felt drained of air. 

Mai raised a brow. “Agni, Zuko, was that the first time a girl has ever touched y—”

“You kissed me,” he blurted out once his brain regained its functions.

“Yes, genius,” she deadpanned, “I did.”

Zuko gaped at her, then at the floor, and then back at her. 

Was he dreaming? He had to be dreaming. His mind would, most often than not, choose to torment him with much grittier things, usually with the darkest of his memories, but he _was_ a teenage boy, after all—it was normal for him to have these sorts of dreams. But, whenever, if ever, he’d have a dream like this, it would be featuring girls that were a product of his imagination, not actual, living, breathing people. And while Mai was very beautiful, especially now more than ever, he’d never seen her as more than his sister’s friend that was good at throwing knives and sulked a lot, or a friend of his own at the most.

As these thoughts raced back and forth in his mind, he lost control of what expression his face had donned, but if the limited emotion she showed fading away in the blink of an eye was any indication, he’d say it wasn’t the reaction she was hoping for.

“If you didn’t like it, you could’ve just said so,” she said, setting her glass on the table, looking away, and crossing her arms. “You didn’t have to frown.”

“No, no, I wasn’t frowning!” Zuko protested, trying to reach out to her, but she stepped out of his grasp. Sighing, he placed his drink next to hers on the desk and turned to her, his head hanging. “Mai, look. I’m sorry. I was just… I just wasn’t expecting it. And I never thought you’d like me _that_ way, I guess…”

She huffed, shaking her head. “You really don't know a thing about women, do you?”

Zuko kept his gaze on the brown satin of his shoes, afraid of what her stone-cold face would hold, as his cheeks burned and simply gave a shrug of his shoulders.

A warm hand cupped his jaw, tilting his face up towards hers. “Well, consider this your first lesson.”

Then, she leaned in and brushed her lips to his once more. And after a brief pause, Zuko returned her kiss, leaning in himself, his hands gently settling themselves on the small of her waist.

This wasn’t at all how he’d imagined his night would go, but he was happy for the distraction from his otherwise disturbing thoughts about his regrets and his future. And even though he’d never seen Mai as more than just a friend, the more he thought about it, the more appealing she became. She was smart, talented, pretty, and most importantly, she cared about him—making her one of the two people left on this planet that did that, the other being Ty Lee, after what he’d done to his beloved uncle.

If she liked him, he knew that she’d liked him for who he was, not for the power or the riches his title as the crown prince brought along.

If she liked him, he could like her back too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!
> 
> After the horrible events of the previous chapters (especially the last one), this chapter sure was a breath of fresh air lol. I'm aware it was sorta Maiko-centric, but worry not—The future chapters will have a lot more going on, so this is basically the only time where Maiko will be the main focus.
> 
> (Idk how to transition between these two paragraphs, so just pretend like I said something clever) This is gonna sound out of the blue, but I kinda need your help with something. I need a Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, or Korean name that has a specific meaning, but I don't wanna disrespect anyone's language or culture by using Google Translate. So, you know, if you speak any of these languages, I would really appreciate it if you could reach out to me :)
> 
> Also, I know I said I'd be posting a smut before uploading this chapter, but it was taking forever to write, so I just decided to work on this instead. I'll let you know when it's posted.
> 
> Oh and before I go, lemme tell you a funny story—As some of you know, I deleted some chapters of this story about a month ago. But while I was deleting them, what my dumbass didn't realize was that I'd also be deleting the comments on those chapters. So what did I do? I went and deleted them, and deleted 40 comments along with them. Yes, you read that right. FORTY COMMENTS. THAT I DELETED. FORTY. *cries inside*
> 
> All jokes aside, thank you for sticking with me. I know I'm not updating very often, but I promise I'm writing as fast as I can, and the next chapter will be uploaded shortly.
> 
> Thank you again for reading, and I'll see you all soon!


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